With all the customary pomp and pageantry accompanying the occasion, the 110th nominally (first time in 12 years) Democrat-led Congress convened on Capitol Hill on January 4. It was done much the same as in earlier years except for the first time ever a woman took the gavel after being elected Speaker of the House in a final vote known weeks in advance killing any suspense about its outcome.
New House Speaker California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi called it “an historic moment for the Congress” which it was but only with respect to the gender of the Speaker, not for what significant policies can be expected over the next two years as this writer explained in an earlier article on November 13 titled New Faces, Same Agenda. The article suggested the political firmament shook briefly on November 7 leading some in the country to hope a new day on Capitol Hill had arrived with the Democrats now in charge ready to bring with them some long-delayed substantive change voters demanded in the November 7 mid-term elections.
It didn’t take long, for those paying attention, to realize how foolish that thinking was as the presumed new Democrat leadership at the time (now confirmed) made it clear in its barely disguised rhetoric it will be business as usual and one more betrayal of the public trust that sent a strong message of disgust in the mid-term elections demanding change it won’t get.
Expecting none is even more certain based on the background of the new Speaker, a 20 year congressional veteran, who’s more privileged than populist, and is one of the wealthiest members in the Congress indicating she’ll do nothing to alter the nation’s course put in place by the Bush administration benefitting members of her class and herself including those ensconced in corporate boardrooms (where the real power of the country lies). They’ve been greatly enriched in the past six years and the previous 20 before them under Republican and DLC Democrat leadership still in charge and very much aligned in planning the continuation of the same agenda ahead.
Expecting change will be even harder in the Senate that’s split 51 – 49 with newly elected former Vermont congressman Bernie Sanders an independent socialist aligned with the Democrats but former Democrat and now independent Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman nominally counted as a Democrat (keeping his seniority in the party and in charge of the Homeland Security panel) but one who votes consistently with the hard right wing of the Republican party, especially for our wars of aggression and Israel’s. It makes the new Senate effectively 50 – 50 with Dick Cheney as vice-president able to cast the only vote that counts if he gets to use it. In addition, George Bush unfortunately is still president and able to veto any unwanted legislation and prevail as the Congress is far from veto-proof.
What might matter for Democrats is they control committee chairmanships in both the House and Senate. Those positions have power, and chairmen of them can use it to advantage if they wish. Beyond the rhetoric now being heard and likely to continue, those expecting little use of that authority against the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress won’t be disappointed. For the country’s majority, however, it’s another story, but most people will be slow catching on if even able at all to do it. It’s the reason politicos literally get away with murder.
The United States of Power and Privilege
Politics 101 again teaches that nothing in Washington can be taken on its face, that campaign promises are empty and disingenuous, and the criminal class in the Capitol is bipartisan in what noted author and social critic Gore Vidal calls our one party state – the property party with two wings in a plutocracy. It also proves former iconic investigative journalist IF Stone’s wisdom that “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.”
Political deception is institutionalized in Washington. It’s in the DNA of most arriving there or succumb to its contagion once elected, and very few officials in Washington stay true to their principles if they had any. Doing it might exclude them from rising to leadership positions because getting them depends on playing by the same kind of “good old boys” rules as all the others in power.
Whatever it is, there may be something about the nation’s capital that brings this on – that makes even good people do bad things when they get there. Sooner or later most decide to go along to get along, and then succumb to the inevitable deadly syndrome of power corrupting and absolute power doing it absolutely. It especially affects those with seniority who’ve risen to high positions in their parties with all the special privileges afforded them in that capacity.
Those paying attention to the rhetoric on January 4 got a bad taste of what it’s like and what’s to come. It came from House Speaker Pelosi and her 26 year congressional veteran and establishmentarian war hawk Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and in the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent the same message promising, as he and Pelosi did on November 8, to work with the president in a spirit of bipartisanship. It meant they were unconditionally surrendering to the established power structure agreeing not be “obstructionist” even though Republicans and the Bush administration never made a pretense of governing that way when they’re in charge. Bottom line – the public got scammed again just like they always are under either party.
As part of the deception, Democrats added some boilerplate pro forma comments promising a “new direction….for all the people, not just the privileged few (and) restoring economic security to a very vulnerable middle class.” If only they meant it which they don’t. Don’t be fooled again as the clear direction ahead was signaled (for those noticing) in the supposedly “liberal” New York Times on January 5 by columnist Carl Hulse saying: “They (the Democrats) can spend their energy trying to reverse what they see as the flaws of the Bush administration and a dozen years (of a) conservative….dominated Congress. Or they can accept the rightward tilt of that period (the NYT through Hulse supports) and grudgingly concede that big tax cuts (not mentioned for the rich), deregulation (no mention of its harm), restrictions on abortion (ignoring the country’s majority saying they’re pro-choice), and other Republican-inspired changes now a permanent part of the legislative framework” the NYT clearly signals it approves of but fails to mention them.
They include the oppressive Patriot Acts I and II, the Military Commissions Act, the revised Insurrection Act of 1807, the Read ID Act, secret illegal surveillance of everyone (even by the Pentagon) including a recent presidential signing statement to postal legislation allowing mail to be opened without a warrant, many tens of billions funded off-the-books for two illegal wars of aggression and many billions more for thuggish “homeland security” enforcement. All these congressionally-approved actions violate our constitutional rights now effectively annulled. So do the privatization of the hopelessly corrupted electoral process and the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution that allowed most all the above abuses to follow it. These and other legislative acts signify a nation sinking fast into despotism. The “liberal” NYT supports it in its role as a quasi-official instrument of state-approved information and propaganda.
The Times columnist, expressing his paper’s view, wants the above agenda continued opposing the majority voting for change who’ll learn soon again none is forthcoming. What is ahead is little more than some tinkering around the edges in the form of inadequate feel-good legislative efforts in what’s characterized as the “first hundred (meaningless) hours” leaving out the remaining 726 or so days in the 110th congressional term that count the most.
Congressional Proposals in the “First 100 Hours” That Will Extend Well Beyond Them For the Senate to Act and Final Reconciliation to Be Completed On Whatever Bills Emerge
It sounds like a title from a Hollywood “bad dream” factory,” but this was the docket in the “First 100 Hours” of posturing hyperbole with lots more ahead from where this came from promising great pain and suffering in the next two years again failing to deliver on promises made just like it’s always been.
— some far too inadequate House “ethics reform” tightening of lobbying standards; requiring members to disclose and justify (but not loose) special-interest and home-district so-called “earmark” pork barrel appropriations (aka thefts of taxpayers money); certifying spouses don’t benefit from “earmark” appropriations; banning members from accepting gifts from lobbyists including fancy meals, free travel paid for by outside groups including corporations, or use of campaign funds to pay for them except for two big loopholes still allowing one-day trips (anywhere) for meetings, panels or to speak and exempting charter plane services from the rule changes that easily can be ordered by a lobbyist as an allowable bribe for congressional services wanted in return.
There’s not a hint in this legislation about the biggest ethical abuse of all – the outrageous corporate and other special interests violations of the public trust in the way campaigns are now financed. They include monstrous loopholes in the law to do it without limit in various soft and hard money ways. It means those running for office have to sell their souls and honor to become a serious candidate for political office unless they have vast independent resources and will part with enough of them. The result is the public gets “the best democracy money can buy” meaning none at all.
An example of it has already begun. With the rhetoric still echoing in the House chamber about so-called ethics reform, the victorious Democrats held a top-dollar fund-raiser collecting admission fees of $1000 a head from attendees quick to line up to take advantage of Democrat influence-peddling for big bucks the Pelosi-led ones see no conflict of interest collecting. In 1995, the Republicans did the same thing, we know the result, and now Democrats in power are acting the same corrupted way at night while disingenuously preaching reform during the day. So the message to voters is free meals from lobbyists are out, but big cash contributions are OK, and with enough of them coming it won’t be hard buying lots of fancy meals and trips and most anything else.
— new proposed rules for pay-as-you-go budgeting requiring new tax cuts (not touching those in place) or entitlement spending be offset with corresponding spending cuts. It means those cuts are coming from essential social services, so this hardly represents reform. Nor is it a step forward from the ugly past generation of congressionally legislated cuts in vitally needed programs those most in need don’t get like many millions of poor single mothers taken off the welfare rolls by the cruel 1996 Clinton administration Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act euphemistically called “welfare reform.”
— raising the federally-mandated minimum wage (last increased in 1996 and 97 in two steps to $5.15 an hour) by $2.15 to a pathetic $7.25 an hour as the Office of Management and Budget defined the inflation-adjusted poverty threshold for a family of four in 2004 to be $19,307 and at year end 2006 is a likely estimated $20,500. The higher minimum wage, if enacted, will provide an income of about $15,000 for someone employed the full year meaning it’s a sub-poverty wage.
In passing this inadequate minimum wage increase, the new House Speaker showed another hint of her anti-populist dark side and betrayal of the public trust five days into the new congressional term. The new law as initially passed exempted American Samoa while applying to all 50 states and other US territories. The reason – to benefit the Starkist subsidiary of Del Monte Corporation headquartered in Pelosi’s home district that employs 75% of the Somoan workforce that was to continue receiving a $3.62 minimum wage or half the amount applicable to all other areas subject to US law if the bill clears the Senate and George Bush signs it. Now the power of public Republican rebuke made Pelosi reconsider. She quickly backtracked saying the initial bill will be altered so American Somoan workers will be guaranteed the same minimum wage as all others the legislation covers.
— Feel-good legislation removing constraints on federally-funded embryonic stem cell research sure to be sustainably vetoed by George Bush who’ll never allow it.
— More feel-good legislation requiring the federal government to negotiate lower prices on prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare again with no chance of final passage as a presidential veto is certain unless a change in the final legislation accomplishes the same thing by keeping drug prices high. The House passed the new law on January 12 without a veto-proof margin, and its fate in the Senate is uncertain before anything ever gets to the White House.
— Legislation to codify recommendations of the fraudulent and corrupted 9/11 (whitewash) commission that should instead be enacted to denounce and scrap its report demanding a new independent commission be formed to learn and disclose all the facts so far suppressed with Democrat complicity in the Congress. More on this below.
— New measures to reduce interest rates on student loans, create federal incentives to develop renewable energy sources and reduce subsidies for Big Oil – more feel-good efforts with few positive results expected beneath the disingenuous headlined achievements.
All of the above is from the House only with the Senate under its much different procedural rules taking them up next in debate under a system where a filibuster can kill a bill and a de facto 50 – 50 body can do it even easier, plus the reconciling procedure between different House and Senate bills to reach compromise on a final one. As the legislative process drags on in the new year and the warm glow of a new “people’s” Congress slowly fades with few substantive results, cold reality will set in that the 110th body isn’t much different than the ones preceding it.
Expect that pattern to emerge even though a bipartisan Senate bill was introduced by Democrat Senator Max Baucus and Republican Charles Grassley to repeal the increasingly repressive alternative minimum tax (AMT)originally intended to assure only the wealthy didn’t escape their tax obligation through loopholes. Now the AMT is a monster mainly afflicting middle-income earners it was never intended for and who shouldn’t be burdened with it. Repealing it, however, won’t be easy because this unfair tax produces so much growing revenue. It’s hard to see its revocation enacted without some serious vital offsets eliminated to pay for it that would result in more harm done than good if it happens. It’s also directly contrary to Speaker Pelosi’s pay-as-you-go budgeting scheme that requires tax cuts to be offset by spending cuts or other compensating revenue adjustments. It will take a whopper of either one to pay for this, and thus it won’t happen without sweeping tax reform along with it that’s impossible in this Congress unwilling to change the sweet tax laws now in place benefitting the rich including themselves.
So much for reform and change in an age of permanent discretionary wars for conquest and plunder with giant corporations running everything for their benefit and Congress in their pockets giving them everything they want from ours.
What the Democrat-Led Congress Isn’t Addressing or Is Doing Inadequately
When all is said and done and the legislative dust clears in the months ahead, whatever parts of the above agenda are enacted in whatever final form, it’s sure they’ll fall far short of rhetoric trumpeting them. They’ll be seen for what they are – a lot of posturing, unmet promises to voters and a little tinkering around the edges with the most crucial of all things people want left unaddressed or taken up inadequately starting with issue number one in the minds of a large and growing majority of the public:
Ending the War in Iraq and Bringing Home the Troops
A majority of the public demands it, protests continue over it, some in the Congress pay it lip service, and nothing happens in the only venues that count – on the floors of both Houses of Congress with the Democrat leadership serving the will of the electorate and introducing and passing legislation to end the illegal wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and all funding for them. Cutting off their funding means cutting off their oxygen effectively ending them no matter what the president, Pentagon or war-profiteers may want.
But it won’t happen according to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin who speaks from both sides of his mouth saying the US “commitment (in Iraq) is not open-ended….I believe the (American) people want us to find a way out (but not) precipitously (so we can) leave Iraq better than we found it (letting Iraqis) take responsibility for their own future (indicating with no firm commitment) we are going to begin (reducing or redeploying) our forces four to six months from now without setting an end point (is the position) the American people will support.”
At the same time, Levin and other key Democrats say they’ll continue funding wars and will accept Bush’s January 10 proposed 20,000 temporary troop “surge” in Iraq (despite some contrary posturing for the public)now called a strategy to “change America’s course” since the earlier one for “Victory in Iraq” flopped. They’ll do it even though three-fourths of the US public opposes it and the White House gives no indication it intends a force reduction any time soon.
That was the message from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden as well who believes top Bush administration officials think the Iraq war is lost and are just postponing its inglorious end. Biden opposes a troop “surge” and will hold weeks of committee hearings on the war. Still he concludes “There is nothing a United States Senate (or senator in any capacity) can do to stop a president from conducting his war.”
Untrue as Biden, Levin, Pelosi and all others in the Democrat leadership know as just explained above. Congress has appropriation authority, and voting to end the funding will cut off George Bush’s power to do anything the Congress forbids. It will render him impotent if the Congress acts responsibly which this Democrat-led one signals unequivocally it will not.
It’s also up to the Congress, not the president, that has sole authority under Section 4(a)(3) of the War Powers Resolution stating “In the absence of a declaration of war (none declared for Iraq), (whenever US) Forces are introduced….in numbers which substantially enlarge (US) Forces….for combat….in a foreign country (only the Congress has the power to authorize it).” As international law expert Professor Francis Boyle explains, failure by the Bush administration to get such authorization is an “impeachable offense under the terms of the United States Constitution for violating the Constitution’s War Powers Clause and Congress’s own War Powers Resolution.”
Despite the law and potential consequences of violating it, the Bush administration isn’t easily deterred or intimidated. So don’t expect change ahead in its permanent war agenda or any Democrat-led effort to force it whatever their post-election bluster that’s only intended as a head fake diversion with no muscle backing it up. George Bush intends to do as he pleases, law or no law, so wars of aggression won’t end because the new Congress backs and will fund them “supporting the troops” and the president – even one with an approval rating down to 26% in one or more independent opinion polls that’s a single point above Richard Nixon’s low point in August, 1974 right before he departed in disgrace to avoid impeachment.
It gets even worse, as it always does, as not a word is heard from Democrats that the Bush administration through lies and deceit committed what the Nuremberg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime” of illegal aggression against a country posing no threat to us or its neighbors. The new Congress also said nothing about what former UN head of Iraqi humanitarian relief called an act of genocide against the Iraqi people when he resigned from his post in anger and disgust in 1998.
The Congress ignored the Lancet report in October, 2006 (other than shamelessly mocking it) that an estimated 655,000 Iraqis were killed by violence stemming from the US invasion, occupation and continuing aggression against the people. It said nothing about the outrageous economic sanctions imposed for a dozen years prior to March, 2003 that killed as many as 1.5 million innocent Iraqis including at least 500,000 children former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright thought was a price worth paying when asked about it on the CBS 60 Minutes program in May, 1996, and since then the number of total deaths has skyrocketed.
It said nothing about US policy under three presidents maliciously and willfully destroying a once prosperous, modern nation leaving in its wake a surreal lawless armed camp wasteland with few or no essential services like electricity, clean water, medical care, fuel or most everything else needed for sustenance and survival denied them by their oppressive occupier there only to seize and control the country’s vast oil reserves to have “veto power” over other nations wanting access to them. It said nothing about the Bush administration building 6 to 12 major permanent bases in the country including at least four to six super-sized ones with every convenience of a modern US city that are there because there’s no force withdrawal intended as long as there’s enough oil in the country and region to warrant their staying.
It said nothing about construction continuing on what will be the world’s largest embassy in Baghdad critics call “Fortress Baghdad in the so-called Green Zone. It sits on 104 acres making it six times larger than the UN compound in New York. It’s a self-contained city within a city for more than 1000 people already there, insulated from the Baghdad community behind 15 foot thick walls for security. It has its own water, sewers, electricity, apartment buildings, a Marine barracks, swimming pool, shops and all other modern conveniences of home at a budgeted cost of $592 million meaning likely double that amount or more once completed. It’s another clear sign the US occupying force isn’t planning an early exit.
The Democrat rhetoric says a lot about the 110th Congress speaking like all others before it with forked tongue – pretending in rhetoric to serve the public interest while acting against it. That’s the reality the US public must understand, address, and demand this time not to tolerate in mass protest demonstrations across the country, in the nation’s capital and in the halls and offices of their representatives in Congress elected to serve us, and it’s high time they did or step aside and let others do it for them.
Other Foreign Wars Unaddressed
With an unwinnable war in Iraq only an end to US occupation will resolve, you’d think the leadership in both parties would raise and debate the other unwinnable one now raging out-of-control in Afghanistan, mostly below the radar. Instead the other US war of aggression against the Afghan people goes on with almost no discussion of it publicly or any hint the Democrat leadership will end that conflict along with the one in Iraq. It’s also never mentioned that like Iraq, this is another resource war for control of the great energy reserves in Central Asia in the landlocked Caspian Basin.
Like the war in Iraq, the Afghan effort also failed, the war is lost, and the Taliban are slowly regaining control because of an oppressive occupation and return of the hated “warlords” after the 2001 intensive joint US-British aerial assault displaced them. The “shock and awe” attack then was against a vulnerable country unable to mount any kind of defense. The Taliban easily succumbed to the onslaught after five weeks when they fled Kabul allowing US-backed Northern Alliance “warlord” forces to enter the city the next day. Once back in charge there and around the country, they engaged in the same kind of murder, rape and mayhem that gave rise to the Taliban originally who finally routed them from most of the country.
The US-led war of aggression created a state of unaddressed desperation for the great majority of Afghans creating high unemployment, extreme poverty, one of the lowest levels of life expectancy in the world, the highest infant mortality rate in the world, one-fifth of all children dying before age five, little access to electricity, clean drinking water and sanitation, little available medical care or most other essentials of life, and an overall surreal situation throughout the country where in parts of Kabul an opulent elite have grown rich from rampant corruption and drug trafficking while most others struggle to survive and many don’t.
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